The Prairie (47 page)

Thus far the picture was the daily exhibition of an encampment confident
in its security. But immediately in front of the lodges was a gathering,
that seemed to forbode some movements of more than usual interest. A
few of the withered and remorseless crones of the band were clustering
together, in readiness to lend their fell voices, if needed, to aid in
exciting their descendants to an exhibition, which their depraved tastes
coveted, as the luxurious Roman dame witnessed the struggles and the
agony of the gladiator. The men were subdivided into groups, assorted
according to the deeds and reputations of the several individuals of
whom they were composed.

They, who were of that equivocal age which admitted them to the hunts,
while their discretion was still too doubtful to permit them to be
trusted on the war-path, hung around the skirts of the whole, catching,
from the fierce models before them, that gravity of demeanour and
restraint of manner, which in time was to become so deeply ingrafted in
their own characters. A few of the still older class, and who had heard
the whoop in anger, were a little more presuming, pressing nigher to
the chiefs, though far from presuming to mingle in their councils,
sufficiently distinguished by being permitted to catch the wisdom which
fell from lips so venerated. The ordinary warriors of the band were
still less diffident, not hesitating to mingle among the chiefs
of lesser note, though far from assuming the right to dispute the
sentiments of any established brave, or to call in question the prudence
of measures, that were recommended by the more gifted counsellors of the
nation.

Among the chiefs themselves there was a singular compound of exterior.
They were divided into two classes; those who were mainly indebted for
their influence to physical causes, and to deeds in arms, and those who
had become distinguished rather for their wisdom than for their services
in the field. The former was by far the most numerous and the most
important class. They were men of stature and mien, whose stern
countenances were often rendered doubly imposing by those evidences of
their valour, which had been roughly traced on their lineaments by the
hands of their enemies. That class, which had gained its influence by
a moral ascendency was extremely limited. They were uniformly to be
distinguished by the quick and lively expression of their eyes, by the
air of distrust that marked their movements, and occasionally by the
vehemence of their utterance in those sudden outbreakings of the
mind, by which their present consultations were, from time to time,
distinguished.

In the very centre of a ring, formed by these chosen counsellors, was
to be seen the person of the disquieted, but seemingly calm, Mahtoree.
There was a conjunction of all the several qualities of the others in
his person and character. Mind as well as matter had contributed to
establish his authority. His scars were as numerous and deep as those of
the whitest head in his nation; his limbs were in their greatest vigour;
his courage at its fullest height. Endowed with this rare combination of
moral and physical influence, the keenest eye in all that assembly was
wont to lower before his threatening glance. Courage and cunning had
established his ascendency, and it had been rendered, in some degree,
sacred by time. He knew so well how to unite the powers of reason and
force, that in a state of society, which admitted of a greater display
of his energies, the Teton would in all probability have been both a
conqueror and a despot.

A little apart from the gathering of the band, was to be seen a set of
beings of an entirely different origin. Taller and far more muscular in
their persons, the lingering vestiges of their Saxon and Norman ancestry
were yet to be found beneath the swarthy complexions, which had been
bestowed by an American sun. It would have been a curious investigation,
for one skilled in such an enquiry, to have traced those points of
difference, by which the offspring of the most western European was
still to be distinguished from the descendant of the most remote
Asiatic, now that the two, in the revolutions of the world, were
approximating in their habits, their residence, and not a little in
their characters. The group, of whom we write, was composed of the
family of the squatter. They stood indolent, lounging, and inert, as
usual when no immediate demand was made on their dormant energies,
clustered in front of some four or five habitations of skin, for which
they were indebted to the hospitality of their Teton allies. The terms
of their unexpected confederation were sufficiently explained, by the
presence of the horses and domestic cattle that were quietly grazing on
the bottom beneath, under the jealous eyes of the spirited Hetty. Their
wagons were drawn about the lodges, in a sort of irregular barrier,
which at once manifested that their confidence was not entirely
restored, while, on the other hand, their policy or indolence prevented
any very positive exhibition of distrust. There was a singular union
of passive enjoyment and of dull curiosity slumbering in every dull
countenance, as each of the party stood leaning on his rifle, regarding
the movements of the Sioux conference. Still no sign of expectation or
interest escaped from the youngest among them, the whole appearing to
emulate the most phlegmatic of their savage allies, in an exhibition of
patience. They rarely spoke; and when they did it was in some short and
contemptuous remark, which served to put the physical superiority of a
white man, and that of an Indian, in a sufficiently striking point
of view. In short, the family of Ishmael appeared now to be in the
plenitude of an enjoyment, which depended on inactivity, but which was
not entirely free from certain confused glimmerings of a perspective, in
which their security stood in some little danger of a rude interruption
from Teton treachery. Abiram, alone, formed a solitary exception to this
state of equivocal repose.

After a life passed in the commission of a thousand mean and
insignificant villanies, the mind of the kidnapper had become hardy
enough to attempt the desperate adventure, which has been laid before
the reader, in the course of the narrative. His influence over the
bolder, but less active, spirit of Ishmael was far from great, and had
not the latter been suddenly expelled from a fertile bottom, of which he
had taken possession, with intent to keep it, without much deference to
the forms of law, he would never have succeeded in enlisting the husband
of his sister in an enterprise that required so much decision and
forethought. Their original success and subsequent disappointment have
been seen; and Abiram now sat apart, plotting the means, by which he
might secure to himself the advantages of his undertaking, which he
perceived were each moment becoming more uncertain, through the open
admiration of Mahtoree for the innocent subject of his villany. We shall
leave him to his vacillating and confused expedients, in order to pass
to the description of certain other personages in the drama.

There was still another corner of the picture that was occupied. On a
little bank, at the extreme right of the encampment, lay the forms of
Middleton and Paul. Their limbs were painfully bound with thongs, cut
from the skin of a bison, while, by a sort of refinement in cruelty,
they were so placed, that each could see a reflection of his own misery
in the case of his neighbour. Within a dozen yards of them a post
was set firmly in the ground, and against it was bound the light and
Apollo-like person of Hard-Heart. Between the two stood the trapper,
deprived of his rifle, his pouch and his horn, but otherwise left in a
sort of contemptuous liberty. Some five or six young warriors, however,
with quivers at their backs, and long tough bows dangling from their
shoulders, who stood with grave watchfulness at no great distance from
the spot, sufficiently proclaimed how fruitless any attempt to escape,
on the part of one so aged and so feeble, might prove. Unlike the other
spectators of the important conference, these individuals were engaged
in a discourse that for them contained an interest of its own.

"Captain," said the bee-hunter with an expression of comical concern,
that no misfortune could depress in one of his buoyant feelings, "do you
really find that accursed strap of untanned leather cutting into your
shoulder, or is it only the tickling in my own arm that I feel?"

"When the spirit suffers so deeply, the body is insensible to pain,"
returned the more refined, though scarcely so spirited Middleton; "would
to Heaven that some of my trusty artillerists might fall upon this
accursed encampment!"

"You might as well wish that these Teton lodges were so many hives of
hornets, and that the insects would come forth and battle with yonder
tribe of half naked savages." Then, chuckling with his own conceit, the
bee-hunter turned away from his companion, and sought a momentary relief
from his misery, by imagining that so wild an idea might be realised,
and fancying the manner, in which the attack would upset even the well
established patience of an Indian.

Middleton was glad to be silent; but the old man, who had listened to
their words, drew a little nigher, and continued the discourse.

"Here is likely to be a merciless and a hellish business!" he said,
shaking his head in a manner to prove that even his experience was at a
loss for a remedy in so trying a dilemma. "Our Pawnee friend is already
staked for the torture, and I well know, by the eye and the countenance
of the great Sioux, that he is leading on the temper of his people to
further enormities."

"Harkee, old trapper," said Paul, writhing in his bonds to catch a
glimpse of the other's melancholy face; "you ar' skilled in Indian
tongues, and know somewhat of Indian deviltries. Go you to the council,
and tell their chiefs in my name, that is to say, in the name of Paul
Hover, of the state of Kentucky, that provided they will guarantee the
safe return of one Ellen Wade into the States, they are welcome to take
his scalp when and in such manner as best suits their amusements; or,
if-so-be they will not trade on these conditions, you may throw in an
hour or two of torture before hand, in order to sweeten the bargain to
their damnable appetites."

"Ah! lad, it is little they would hearken to such an offer, knowing, as
they do, that you are already like a bear in a trap, as little able to
fight as to fly. But be not down-hearted, for the colour of a white man
is sometimes his death-warrant among these far tribes of savages, and
sometimes his shield. Though they love us not, cunning often ties their
hands. Could the red nations work their will, trees would shortly be
growing again on the ploughed fields of America, and woods would be
whitened with Christian bones. No one can doubt that, who knows the
quality of the love which a Red-skin bears a Pale-face; but they have
counted our numbers until their memories fail them, and they are not
without their policy. Therefore is our fate unsettled; but I fear me
there is small hope left for the Pawnee!"

As the old man concluded, he walked slowly towards the subject of his
latter observation, taking his post at no great distance from his
side. Here he stood, observing such a silence and mien as became him
to manifest, to a chief so renowned and so situated as his captive
associate. But the eye of Hard-Heart was fastened on the distance, and
his whole air was that of one whose thoughts were entirely removed from
the present scene.

"The Siouxes are in council on my brother," the trapper at length
observed, when he found he could only attract the other's attention by
speaking.

The young partisan turned his head with a calm smile as he answered
"They are counting the scalps over the lodge of Hard-Heart!"

"No doubt, no doubt; their tempers begin to mount, as they remember the
number of Tetons you have struck, and better would it be for you now,
had more of your days been spent in chasing the deer, and fewer on the
war-path. Then some childless mother of this tribe might take you in the
place of her lost son, and your time would be filled in peace."

"Does my father think that a warrior can ever die? The Master of Life
does not open his hand to take away his gifts again. When He wants
His young men He calls them, and they go. But the Red-skin He has once
breathed on lives for ever."

"Ay, this is a more comfortable and a more humble faith than that which
yonder heartless Teton harbours. There is something in these Loups which
opens my inmost heart to them; they seem to have the courage, ay, and
the honesty, too, of the Delawares of the hills. And this lad—it is
wonderful, it is very wonderful; but the age, and the eye, and the limbs
are as if they might have been brothers! Tell me, Pawnee, have you ever
in your traditions heard of a mighty people who once lived on the shores
of the Salt-lake, hard by the rising sun?"

"The earth is white, by people of the colour of my father."

"Nay, nay, I speak not now of any strollers, who have crept into the
land to rob the lawful owners of their birth-right, but of a people who
are, or rather were, what with nature and what with paint, red as the
berry on the bush."

"I have heard the old men say, that there were bands, who hid themselves
in the woods under the rising sun, because they dared not come upon the
open prairies to fight with men."

"Do not your traditions tell you of the greatest, the bravest, and the
wisest nation of Red-skins that the Wahcondah has ever breathed upon?"

Hard-Heart raised his head, with a loftiness and dignity that even his
bonds could not repress, as he answered—

"Has age blinded my father; or does he see so many Siouxes, that he
believes there are no longer any Pawnees?"

"Ah! such is mortal vanity and pride!" exclaimed the disappointed old
man, in English. "Natur' is as strong in a Red-skin, as in the bosom of
a man of white gifts. Now would a Delaware conceit himself far mightier
than a Pawnee, just as a Pawnee boasts himself to be of the princes of
the 'arth. And so it was atween the Frenchers of the Canadas and the
red-coated English, that the king did use to send into the States, when
States they were not, but outcrying and petitioning provinces, they
fou't and they fou't, and what marvellous boastings did they give forth
to the world of their own valour and victories, while both parties
forgot to name the humble soldier of the land, who did the real service,
but who, as he was not privileged then to smoke at the great council
fire of his nation, seldom heard of his deeds, after they were once
bravely done."